FinFET technology has shown great promise in improving transistor density and reduced source/drain leakage while maintaining needed performance requirements. This uses a semiconductor structure elevated above a substrate floor. The channel portion itself resembles a fin so the name FinFET has been used. A gate overlies the fin and the width of the gate in this structure determines the channel length. The height of the fin and the number of fins determines the channel width. This results in improved density. In this structure the gate is effective on two sides of the fin resulting in two channels for each fin. The fin is also sufficiently thin that the entire thickness of the fin is under the influence of the gate. This results in reduced source/drain leakage.
The FinFET technology, however, is still not competitive with planar transistor technology in the marketplace where performance and manufacturability are critical. Much improvement in this area is necessary before FinFETs will be appearing in actual products.
Thus there is a need for improving the performance and manufacturability of FinFETs.